Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941

by William L. Shirer

  GENEVA, June 10

  A day! But we’re here. Three bad moments. First, when I went to collect five hundred marks owed me by the manager of one of the shipping companies. The Gestapo have been arresting people right and left for “illegal” exchange transactions. Any passing of money is suspect. When I walked into the manager’s inner office, X, a Nazi spy who had long posed here as an anti-Nazi emigrant, stood there grinning at me. I thought for a second it was a trap. But the manager, an Englishman, walked down the Ring with me and gave me the money. Still, X is probably out to get me, I thought, and I was glad our plane was leaving in two hours.

  At the Aspern airport they behaved very suspiciously. I explained to the Gestapo chief that Tess was too weak to stand up and I would go over the luggage with him. I had laid Tess out on a bench in the waiting-room. He demanded that she stand up and explain things during the customs examination. Otherwise we couldn’t leave. I tried to hold her up. Then a police official led me away. I left the nurse to help as best she could. In a little room two police officials went through my pocket-book and my pockets. Everything was in order. They then led me into a side room. “Wait here,” they said. I said I wanted to go back to help with the baggage inspection, that my wife was in a critical state; but they shut the door. I heard the lock turn. I was locked in. Five, ten, fifteen minutes. Pacing the floor. Time for the airplane to leave. Past time. Then I heard Tess shout: “Bill, they’re taking me away to strip me!” I had spoken with the Gestapo chief about that, explained that she was heavily bandaged, the danger of infection… I pounded on the door. No result. Through the window I could hear and see the Swiss racing the two motors of their Douglas plane, impatient to get away. After a half-hour I was led out to a corridor connecting the waiting-room with the airfield. I tried to get into the waiting-room, but the door was locked. Finally Tess came, the nurse supporting her with one arm and holding the baby in the other.

  “Hurry, there,” snapped an official. “You’ve kept the plane waiting a half-hour.” I held my tongue and grabbed Tess.

  She was gritting her teeth, as angry as I’ve ever seen her. “They stripped me, the…” she kept saying. I thought she was going to turn and scratch at the official following us. We hurried across the runway to the plane. I wondered what could happen in the next seconds before we were in the plane and safe. Maybe X would come running out and demand my arrest. Then we were in the plane and it was racing across the field.

  Flew blind in storm clouds along the Alps all the way from Vienna to Zürich, the plane pitching and tossing and most of the passengers sick and scared. Then there was Zürich down there, Switzerland, sanity, civilization again.

  LAUSANNE, June (undated)

  We came up the lake on a paddle-steamer, Tess and Ed Murrow and I, on this glorious June afternoon, the water blue like the Mediterranean, the shores splashing green, the Jura mountains to the left, a deep, smoky blue, the Alps to the right, pink and white under the snow and sun. It was almost overwhelming. Ed and I here for the semi-annual conference of the International Broadcasting Union. As associate instead of regular members we refrain from the scraps of the European broadcasters and merely observe, which gives us time for extra-curricular activities. The Broadcasting Union, at that, is one of the few examples of real European co-operation. Reason: if the broadcasters don’t co-operate, especially in the matter of wave-lengths, there won’t be any European radio. The Czechs and some of the English here much exercised about an editorial in the London Times on June 3 advising the Czechs to hold a plebiscite for the Sudeten Germans and if they want to join the Reich to let them. The Times argues that if this is done, Germany would lose any claim to interfere in the affairs of Czechoslovakia. The Old Lady simply won’t learn. Ed and Dick Marriot of BBC, an intelligent and courageous young man, very pessimistic about the strength and designs of the “appeasement” crowd in London. Major Atkinson of BBC, whose English translation of Spengler’s Decline of the West is even better than the original—one of the few great translations from the German, an almost untranslatable language—and who is also a terrific expert on the American Civil War, came charging up to me this evening on the terrace where we were having coffee, a bottle of red Burgundy in one hand and a large globular glass in the other, and said: “Shirer, what would have happened at Gettysburg if Lee had…” and he went into some complicated military problem. I see we shall be fighting the Civil War over here. And these English military chaps know much more about it than any American civilian.

  ÉVIAN-LES-BAINS, July 7

  Delegates from thirty-two states here, on Roosevelt’s initiative, to discuss doing something about refugees from the Third Reich. Myron C. Taylor, heading the American delegation, elected permanent president of the committee today. I doubt if much will be done. The British, French, and Americans seem too anxious not to do anything to offend Hitler. It’s an absurd situation. They want to appease the man who is responsible for their problem. The Nazis of course will welcome the democracies’ taking the Jews off their hands at the democracies’ expense. I guess I was a little hasty thinking the “radio foreign correspondent” had been born at the time of the Anschluss. I’ve put on Taylor for a broadcast, but have no invitation from New York to talk myself on the program of this conference. We are not really covering it at all. Stumbled into Jimmy Sheean, whom I have not seen since our Paris days ten years ago. We had a big reunion at the Casino last night, Robert Dell of the Manchester Guardian, a grand old man, joining us. Jimmy broke the bank at the baccarat table while I was winning a couple of thousand francs more laboriously at roulette, Dell, who is in his sixties, remaining in the hall to dance. Dinah Sheean joined us during the evening, she beautiful with large intelligent eyes. Renewing acquaintance with other old friends, Bob Pell of the American delegation, John Elliott, and others. Should mention John Winant, whom I met a month ago in Geneva and who has been here, a very likable person, liberal, awkward in manner, a bit Lincolnesque.

  PRAGUE, August 4

  Lord Runciman arrived today to gum up the works and sell the Czechs short if he can. He and his Lady and staff, with piles of baggage, proceeded to the town’s swankiest hotel, the Alcron, where they have almost a whole floor. Later Runciman, a taciturn thin-lipped little man with a bald head so round it looks like a mis-shapen egg, received us—about three hundred Czech and foreign reporters—in the reception hall. I thought he went out of his way to thank the Sudeten leaders, who, along with Czech Cabinet members, turned out to meet him at the station, for their presence.

  Runciman’s whole mission smells. He says he has come here to mediate between the Czech government and the Sudeten party of Konrad Henlein. But Henlein is not a free agent. He cannot negotiate. He is completely under the orders of Hitler. The dispute is between Prague and Berlin. The Czechs know that Chamberlain personally wants Czechoslovakia to give in to Hitler’s wishes. These wishes we know: incorporation of all Germans within the Greater Reich. Someone tonight—Walter Kerr, I think, of the Herald Tribune, produced a clipping from his paper of a dispatch written by its London correspondent, Joseph Driscoll, after he had participated in a luncheon with Chamberlain given by Lady Astor. It dates back to last May, but makes it clear that the Tory government goes so far as to favour Czecho ceding the Sudetenland outright to Germany. Before the Czechs do this, I’m convinced, they’ll fight. For it would mean giving up their natural defences and their Maginot Line. It would mean their end. They’re willing to give the Sudetens practical autonomy. But Henlein demands the right to set up a little Sudeten Nazi state within the state. Once he has this, of course, he will secede to Germany.

  Dined tonight at the Baarandov, overlooking the lovely Moldau, with Jeff Cox of the Daily Express and Kerr. Prague, with its Gothic and baroque architecture, its winding little streets, its magnificent Charles Bridge across the Moldau, and the bluffs on one side on which perches the Hradshin castle built by the Habsburgs, has more character than almost any other city in Europe.

  Test
ing daily with Czech radio engineers their new short-wave transmitter. Our engineers in New York, working with RCA, sending a daily report now of reception there. Sunday we will try it out for the first time with a broadcast of some Czech army manoeuvres. Svoboda does not think it will carry well to New York.

  PRAGUE, August 14

  A few minutes before we went on the air this afternoon, while the troops on the ground and the air force in the air were rehearsing a grand show, a Skoda fighter diving from ten thousand feet failed to come fully out of its dive. It crashed in front of my microphone and skidded a couple of hundred feet past me. When it came to a stop it was a mass of twisted metal. I was talking at the time, describing the dive. Phoebe Packard of U.P., who was helping in the broadcast, says I kept on shouting into the mike when it crashed, but I do not remember. The pilot and his observer were still alive when we extricated them from the wreckage, but I fear they will not live this day out. Four or five soldiers lying in a skirmish line in front of us were badly hurt when the plane skidded over them. We were all a bit paralysed and I offered to call off the broadcast, but the commanding general said we would go on. Phoebe, large, a bit masculine, and the only woman correspondent to go through both the Ethiopian and the Spanish wars, which have hardened her to such things, remained very calm, though obviously affected.

  CBS engineers afterwards said there had been a little too much gunfire for an ideal broadcast, but they were enthusiastic about the new Czech transmitter. It gives us an independent outlet now if the Germans cut the telephone lines.

  PRAGUE, August 24

  Runciman still fussing about, asking the Czechs to make all the concessions. He has the government busy now working out a plan of cantonal government à la Suisse. The situation being momentarily quiet, am going to Berlin tomorrow to take a look at the military parade Hitler is putting on for Horthy, Regent of Hungary.

  BERLIN, August 25

  The military attachés, are still a little bit pop-eyed tonight. Among other things which the Reichswehr showed Horthy (and the world) in the big military parade was an enormous field-gun, at least an eleven-inch affair, hauled in four pieces on motor trucks. There were other big guns and new big tanks and the infantry goose-stepped very well. But the big motorized Bertha was the sensation of the day. No one has ever seen a cannon that big outside of a battleship, except for the railroad guns. And how the spectators applauded it! As if it were not inanimate, a cold piece of steel. When I called at the Embassy after the parade, our military experts were busy working out sketches of the gun from memory. No photographing was allowed, except for one or two official shots which did not show much. Ralph [Barnes] as excited as a cat. Some of the American correspondents, more friendly than others to the Nazis, laughed at me at the Taverne tonight when I maintained the Czechs would fight.

  GENEVA, September 9

  One last fleeting visit with the family before the war clouds break. In Berlin the best opinion is that Hitler has made up his mind for war if it is necessary to get back his Sudetens. I doubt it for two reasons: first, the German army is not ready; secondly, the people are dead against war. The radio has been saying all day that Great Britain has told Germany she will fight if Czecho is invaded. Perhaps so, but you cannot forget the Times leader of three days ago inviting the Czechs to become a more “homogeneous state” by handing the Sudetens over to Hitler.

  The atmosphere here in Geneva is delightfully unreal. On Monday the 102nd meeting of the League Council and the 19th meeting of the Assembly open and all the internationalists are convening here to do nothing. The Czech situation is not even on the agenda, and won’t be. Who was it put it so well the other day as we were walking along Lake Geneva and the great League Secretariat building came into view? Someone. “A beautiful granite sepulchre! Let us admire its beauty against the green hills and the mountains. There, my friend, are buried the dead hopes of peace for our generation.”

  Tess, with baby, off to America towards the end of the month to establish residence for her citizenship. I off to Prague tomorrow by plane to cover the peace or the war. Have almost convinced CBS they should let me talk five minutes daily—revolutionary in the broadcasting business!

  PRAGUE, September 10

  All Europe waiting for Hitler’s final word to be pronounced at the wind-up of the Nazi Party rally at Nuremberg day after tomorrow. In the meantime we had two speeches today, one by President Beneš here; the other by Göring at Nuremberg, where all week the Nazis have been thundering threats against Czechoslovakia. Beneš, who spoke from the studio of the Czech Broadcasting System, was calm and reasonable—too much so, I thought, though he was obviously trying to please the British. He said: “I firmly believe that nothing other than moral force, goodwill, and mutual trust will be needed…. Should we, in peace, solve our nationality affairs… our country will be one of the most beautiful, best administered, worthiest, and most equitable countries in the world…. I do not speak through fear of the future. I have never been afraid in my life. I have always been an optimist, and my optimism is stronger today than at any other time…. Let us all preserve calmness… but let us be optimistic… and, above all, let us not forget that faith and goodwill move mountains….”

  Dr. Beneš delivered it in both Czech and German, so that I understood it, and running into him in the hall of the Broadcasting House when he had finished, I wanted to rush up and say: “But you are dealing with gangsters, with Hitler and Göring!” But I did not have the nerve and merely nodded good-evening and he walked on, a brave little Czech peasant’s son who has made many mistakes in the last two decades, but who, when all is said and done, stands for the democratic decencies that Hitler is out to destroy. His face was grave, not nearly so optimistic as his words, and I doubt not he knows the terrible position he is in.

  The other speech, Göring’s, as given out by Reuter’s here: “A petty segment of Europe is harassing human beings…. This miserable pygmy race [the Czechs] without culture—no one knows where it came from—is oppressing a cultured people and behind it is Moscow and the eternal mask of the Jew devil….”

  PRAGUE, September 11

  All quiet here, but you can cut the tension with a knife. Reports that the Germans have massed two hundred thousand troops on the Austro-Czech border. In London continuous conferences in Downing Street. In Paris Daladier conferring with Gamelin. But all awaiting Hitler’s speech tomorrow. CBS finally okays a five-minute daily report from here, but asks me to cable beforehand when I think the news does not warrant my taking the time.

  PRAGUE, September 12

  The Great Man has spoken. And there’s no war, at least not for the moment. That is Czechoslovakia’s first reaction to Hitler’s speech at Nuremberg tonight. Hitler hurled insults and threats at Prague. But he did not demand that the Sudetens be handed over to him outright. He did not even demand a plebiscite. He insisted, however, on “self-determination” for the Sudetens. I listened to the broadcast of the speech in the apartment of Bill and Mary Morrell overlooking Wilson station. The smoke-filled room was full of correspondents—Kerr, Cox, Maurice Hindus, and so on. I have never heard the Adolf quite so full of hate, his audience quite so on the borders of bedlam. What poison in his voice when at the beginning of his long recital of alleged wrongs to the Sudeteners he paused: “Ich spreche von der Czechoslovakei!” His words, his tone, dripping with venom.

  Everyone in Czechoslovakia seems to have listened to the speech, the streets being deserted tonight from eight to ten. An extraordinary meeting of the Inner Cabinet Council was convoked immediately afterwards, but Beneš did not attend. Morrell and I put in calls to Karlsbad and Reichenberg to see if the three and a half million Sudeteners had gone berserk after the speech. Fortunately there had been a pouring rain throughout the country. Some six thousand Henlein enthusiasts, wearing Swastika arm bands, paraded the streets of Karlsbad afterwards shouting: “Down with the Czechs and Jews! We want a plebiscite!” But there was no clash. Same story at Reichenberg.

&
nbsp; Prague on this day when war and peace have apparently hung in the balance has been dark and dismal, with a cold, biting, soaking rain. I roamed through the old streets most of the day trying to see how a people react with war and invasion staring them in the face and when you know that in twenty-one minutes from the moment of declaration of war, if there is a declaration of war, the bombs may come raining down on you. The Czechs were going about their business as usual, not gloomy, not depressed, not frightened. Either they haven’t any nerves at all, or perhaps they’re the people with the iron nerves.

  The Russians—perhaps aided by the Czechs—did a beautiful job of jamming Hitler’s speech tonight. Königsberg, Breslau, Vienna—all the stations in the east—were unintelligible. We had to go way over to Cologne before we could get a decent reception.

  PRAGUE, September 13–14 (3 a.m.)

  War very near, and since midnight we’ve been waiting for the German bombers, but so far no sign. Much shooting up in the Sudetenland, at Eger, Elbogen, Falkenau, Habersbirk. A few Sudeteners and Czechs killed and the Germans have been plundering Czech and Jewish shops. So the Czechs very rightly proclaimed martial law this morning in five Sudeten districts. About seven this evening we learned that Henlein had sent a six-hour ultimatum to the government. It was delivered at six p.m., expired at midnight. It demanded: repeal of martial law, withdrawal of Czech police from the Sudetenland, “separation” of military barracks from the civilian population. Whether it is backed by Hitler we do not know, though after his Nuremberg speech there seems little doubt that it is. Anyway, the Czech government has turned it down. It could not have done otherwise. It has made its choice. It will fight. We wait now for Hitler’s move.